PrintJune 28, 2010
When Folks Stop Liking Barry
President Obama's image of leadership flounders in the Gulf of Mexico. While Governor Jindal displays the true qualities of leadership, our president is stuck in Saul Alinksy gear, demonizing a foreign corporation instead of actually doing anything constructive. Disgust at Obama's genuine incompetence at this genuine ecological disaster stretches across party lines and the ideological spectrum.
Barry blames Bush for everything about our dismal economy. A partisan rubber-stamp Congress has given Obama the wild and wasteful expenditures which his childish, failed, quasi-Keynesian witches' brew prophesies will spend us into prosperity. It hasn't worked. Now, oddly, congressmen facing electoral apocalypse have stopped writing our wise leader a blank check against the federal treasury.
Wearing the hat of Commander in Chief, Obama explicitly sought a general in sync with his plan to end the war in Afghanistan. Then, when General McChrystal snickered too publicly at Obama's cartoon leadership, the president replaced him with the old Bush team -- the man Obama and his pals three years ago were calling "General Betray Us." Does this cause a "willing suspension of disbelief" in Obama?
The nomination of radical leftist women to the Supreme Court simply reinforces the image of Obama as a closet Marxist. His cabinet choices reinforce this image of radicalism. The American people, during Obama's administration, profess to be conservative -- and increasingly conservative according to Gallup, a poll that already shows that conservatives outnumber liberals in every single state of the Union.
The Blagojevich trial, which has already hinted at Obama's connection to the thoroughly seamy side of Chicago political corruption, may do more than hint at criminal misconduct in the future. Other creepy people, like Tony Rezko, keep popping up with common connections to Obama and Blago. How dirty is Obama? No one knows, but no Democrat could rise out of the cesspool of Chicago politics without some ethical problems.
The cumulative impact of these corrosives on Obama's presidency is becoming very clear. Although polls differ in the precise measurement of unhappiness with Obama as president, the trends in all the polls are consistent, and the combined average of these various polls is clear and stark: Confidence in President Obama has fallen dramatically, and a plurality of Americans now disapprove of the job he has done as president.
What, then, is preventing a total collapse of Obama? In a word, it is Obama's likability. Before my conservative friends commit me to an asylum, we must be objective: Many millions more Americans like Obama than see him as an effective leader. He is (or is seen as) a loving father, a good husband, a sincere man who rose out of difficult circumstances into high office. Obama speaks well, he talks about sports, he is seen in every flattering photo-op which the servile leftist press can engineer. Americans like him.
Since television became king in politics, presidents who appeared "likable" to the camera -- Eisenhower, JFK, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Obama -- have had a huge advantage in connecting to the American people. Why? The reason is largely because Americans are naturally optimistic, friendly, and receptive people. We want to like our leader.
Likability, however, is a two-edged sword. When pettiness peaks its pointy head in a president -- Jimmy Carter is the perfect example -- then Americans sour on the man in the White House. Few Americans ever expected to "like" LBJ, Nixon, or George H.W. Bush. The national judgment on these politicians is more or less connected to their actual accomplishments or failures. When the American people saw Carter as a failure in governance and a more unpleasant person than they imagined, then he became toxic in politics. When Obama, already a catastrophe as a chief executive and policy innovator, loses his kismet with Americans, then his presidency will simply implode. Hillary Clinton might well challenge Obama just like Teddy Kennedy took on a Carter, who at times was almost running third in election polls (behind, or close to behind, maverick Republican John Anderson).
What might make average, otherwise only mildly political Americans begin to really dislike Barack Obama? If he shows a thin-skinned temper to questions or challenges. Anger comes off very badly on television. If Obama gets caught in a transparent lie, then that deceit could be a quick and deep stinger. If he appears condescending and arrogant, as he did on the infamous San Francisco tape when he was talking about people "clinging to their religion and guns," then the people may see a different Obama.
Will one or more of those incidents occur before the public eye during his presidency? The more appropriate question is: When will Obama show his true character before the American people? Obama's choreography is tight, but national and world events are wildly unpredictable. Who could have guessed that Obama would now be grappling with an oil spill? Who knows what the next time bomb will be?
In fact, the real time bomb is probably Obama himself. As Robin of Berkeley observed in her truly scary article, Barack Hussein Obama may well be have been a traumatized victim in his youth, perhaps of sexual abuse. If he is, then Obama will have personality disorders which simply cannot be cured (read Robin's article for the details). If Robin is right, then at some point, the true, hopelessly sick Obama will show himself before a horrified nation. Average Americans will no longer like the president. They will, instead, be saddened and repelled -- and they will emphatically expel Obama and his supporters from power or influence in our lives. When folks stop liking Barry, the party is over.
Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie and The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
